Justus and Clement

Justus and Clement are, according to tradition, the evangelisers of the Volterra region in Tuscany and patrons of that city. Justus was held to be its first bishop, and Clement was the priest. They lived in the sixth century.

Their story has been handed down in a Life written by the monk Blinderannus in the eleventh century and in a collection of miracles of the twelfth. According to these texts, Justus and Clement (perhaps brothers), together with other clergy led by Bishop Regulus, left Africa around 537, persecuted by the Vandals. They landed in Tuscany: Cerbonius and Regulus settled at Populonia, while Justus and Clement, together with Octavian, went to Volterra. There they struggled against heretics, evangelised the people and defended the city besieged by the Goths.

The story says that, as the Ostrogoth king Totila prepared to occupy the city, Justus had all the bread in the city gathered and lowered it over the walls in great baskets to give to the enemy. The Goths, bewildered by the unexpected gesture, abandoned the siege. Justus is said to have been proclaimed bishop by the people of Volterra. After going to Rome to obtain confirmation of the appointment, he decided with Clement to live as a hermit, and they settled in a wood near Campo Marzio. Both died on 5 June, the day of Pentecost, in an unknown year, and were buried at the place of their hermitage.

Scholars doubt the African origin of the two and whether Justus was really a bishop; he appears as such only from the fourteenth century. Yet already in a diploma of Louis the Pious, Justus is patron of the cathedral of Volterra.

At the burial place two chapels were raised, soon a place of pilgrimage, and the Benedictines founded a monastery there, San Giusto in Botro, which passed to the Camaldolese in 1113 and was later badly damaged by landslides. In 1628 the building of the church of San Giusto Nuovo began. The old abbey, rebuilt in the sixteenth century, was abandoned by the monks after the earthquake of 1846. The feast of Justus and Clement is on 5 June (or the Monday or Tuesday of Pentecost).